Category Archives: life lessons

Does Your Dog Bite?

10 Saturday Jun 2017

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Sometimes it’s the little things…

… that grab you by the short hairs and make a mess of your nice, organized life.

Clouseau2

“Does your dog bite?”

Case in point.  A few weeks ago, noticing that the Admiral (aka Nelson, the very pushy poodle) was getting very shaggy, and needed an appointment with his barber (read: groomer) and knowing that my husband, who usually takes him, was working a lot of hours, I called, scheduled an appointment for a Saturday and took Nelson in myself.  The ‘barber’ (shh, don’t let him hear you say groomer, he gets all weird about it), was insanely busy, with every table taken and every, um, let’s call them ‘spa cubicles’ (Don’t say crate.  Don’t ever say crate!) filled.  I passed Nels to the wife of our – ahem – barber, who’s been taking care of Nelson’s sartorial needs for several years now, made sure she had my phone number and toddled out.

Feeling accomplished, and a little smug, I went home and got on with the rest of my day.  I was working on a particularly intense chapter in my novel, and was startled when barely forty minutes later the phone rang.  “Hi,” said I.  “Are you done already?”

“Actually, there’s been a little problem.”

Uh oh.  “Problem?  What kind of problem?”  Had they nicked him?  Clipped his toe nails too close?  What on earth?

“Um, Nelson bit Dan.”

Oh crap.  “Oh my gosh, is he okay?”  Visions of expensive medical bills, getting sued, maybe even having to put the dog down…

“Oh he’s fine.  It didn’t break the skin.  But Nelson is now curled up in a corner and won’t come out.”

It was a shocker.  Nelson has always behaved marvelously at the groom– I mean, barber.  I never imagined something like this.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Nelson has his crabby dog moments.   To hear Nelson tell it, his ‘fits of pique’ are only natural.  After all, it’s stressful being the driving force behind the British Navy.  He says it’s a constant a struggle to lead his crew with only one arm (at which point I have to remind him that he does, indeed, have all four paws), that no one truly appreciates his dedication to the Queen.  (Queen?  You mean me, you dinglefutz?) Yes, the Admiral is a prima donna.

Lord Admiral Nelson

But I never thought he’d actually nip anyone.

Our ‘barber’ was super sweet when I went to pick up the little monster.  We talked about what was different this time – lots and lots of dogs there (which makes the Admiral anxious), the fact that he had to be put in a crate, (which makes him really anxious) and lastly, and probably the real kicker, I was the one who dropped him off.  Now, you have to remember, my husband is ALWAYS the one to drop him off.  And Nelson is a mama’s boy.  I think he must have thought I was abandoning him there – or something.  So the barber and I agreed to give the little knucklehead a few weeks to calm down/forget the whole thing and try again.

So.  Fast forward two weeks.  Husband took the Admiral back to the barber this morning.  Took him straight in, and Nelson’s barber took him back to the basin for his wash right away, and even the barber’s wife held him after he was finished until hubby could pick him up (which was only a couple of minutes) so he didn’t have to be put in a crate – I mean, spa cubicle.  The upshot?  Nelson was absolutely golden.

All of which tells me two things.  One, screwing with the Admiral’s routine is bad.  Like, crossing the streams, bad.

Crossing the Streams

“Egon, you said crossing the streams was bad.”

Two, the Admiral has me, and pretty much everyone else, wrapped around his furry little pinkie tighter than a choke chain on a lunging chihuahua.  Tell me something I didn’t know, right?

And just for fun, here are the before and after shots.  Yes, that is the same dog. 😁

The Admiral Avant et Apres Barber

The Admiral Avant et Apres Barber

Like I said, it’s the little things…

Keep it cool, fellow babies.  And as always,

Illegitimi non carborundum!

Goodnight Sweet Princess, and Choirs of Jedi Sing Thee to Thy Rest

16 Monday Jan 2017

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Gone but not forgotten…

general-organa

Much like millions of other people, I was rocked to my core at the end of December by the death of Carrie Fisher.  Her passing capped a year-long litany of loss, starting for me personally with the death of Glenn Frey.  But Carrie’s death was perhaps the most impactful for me.  Maybe because it came right at the end and was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Maybe it was because she was only three years older than me.  Maybe it was because she was the first woman who showed me, at a very impressionable age, that a woman could be both strong and feminine, soft yet tough.  That a woman could carry a blaster, rescue herself and one-up even the most hard-hearted mercenary, all while saving the galaxy.

In addition, although Ms. Fisher had a tumultuous personal life, she weathered it all with a wry wit, re-invented herself to meet the changing times and at every turn of the road managed to stay true to herself.  She was, unabashedly, her own woman.  Plus, her relationship with her dog, Gary, touched my heart in ways few other things could. I mean, how could you not love someone who loved that sweet pup?

I posted, when I was able to form coherent thought again, on Facebook, absolutely heartsick:

Facebook post for Carrie Fisher.png

Hoaky, yes, but it was my cheesy homage to a woman I greatly admired.

And then, later in the week, someone I know shocked me to the core again when they asked me why I was so devastated by the death of a woman I’d never even met.

I had no words at the time to explain to this person that even though you may never have met someone, they can still have a profound impact on your sense of self. Strangers, even those who have been gone from this earthly plane hundreds of years before you were born, can teach you about life, strife, honor, courage, and selflessness.  We meet these people on the screen, in books, through recordings, or via storytelling and we connect with them – or at least our perception of them.  Something touches us deeply and we feel a resonance.  And that resonance carries us forward, becoming a seed inside us, part of who we are.  They become personal heroes, icons, representations in our psyche of the essence of the role or attribute we associate with them.  They become that the ideal or perfect model of something, like an object from Plato’s Ideal realm.

And then that person, who is now so much more than a person, dies.  And we (or perhaps I should just say I) feel bereft.  The earth shakes.  The foundation crumbles and for a moment, the fragility of reality comes crashing down and that thing, that ideal, dies too.  If our heroes can die, then so can we mere mortals.  All is impermanence.  The rock we cling to is now dust and we no longer know how to stand.

Of course, in time, we pick ourselves up and hopefully, using that seed inside us, learn to stand on our own, building up that rock inside us as memory and guiding light.  But the grief is real, even if the person was not personally known to us, was not someone we sat down and had coffee with.  The grief is very, very real.

I am still reeling.  But I have seen enough heroes cross over to the Summerland this year that I am learning how to find my balance more quickly. Perhaps that is the lesson here.  To learn to get up faster from the vicissitudes of life, so that we can make the most of what ever number of days we have remaining.  Because clearly, if 2016 has taught us nothing else, every day, every bloody stinking glorious precious day, has to count.

Requiescat in pace, Carrie.

carrie-fisher

And to the rest of you,

Illegitimi non carborundum.